


beyond breaking, into devastation

by Hymn



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Betrayal, F/M, M/M, Silver Millennium Era, ends as you'd expect it to guys, poor kunzute ):, tragic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-05
Updated: 2007-07-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 15:17:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13274193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: When you’re never, ever enough, you find you’ll do crazy things.





	beyond breaking, into devastation

**Author's Note:**

> for the springkink prompt: Sailor Moon, Endymion/Kunzite: Loyalty - "I've done everything for you!"

He was supposed to be hunting. Maybe if he caught one of the white stag that ran through these parts his father would pat him on the back, and maybe his mother would smile in pleasure and say that the pelt would make a nice cloak. Anything would be better than his father’s hard stare and his terse, “Earn your keep, boy,” before shoving him from their moving caravan with nothing but a bow and a small quiver of badly fletched arrows.

But that harshness was familiar, at least, and Kunzite started tracking, and by nightfall he had three rabbits tied on a twine looped through his belt, and a young buck. Not a white, but the dark brown of its fur was pretty enough. Maybe his mother would like it. He skinned it as quickly as he could, grimacing at the mess he made. Blood stained his clothing and his pale hair, and he thought, at first, that he was going to be sick.

He really hoped his mother liked it.

After that he started jogging back the way he’d come. He had to move quickly, because night had already fallen, and the train would start moving shortly after first light, and there was no telling how far the caravans had gotten before curling up into its sleeping coil.

Kunzite ran, and he ran, and he ran, and he ran.

And then he mistepped, and broke his ankle in a hole. Crumpled on the ground, his jaw locked around his pained whimpering, all Kunzite could do was look out in the direction of his people. They wouldn’t wait for him, Kunzite knew, with a quiet, cold sorrow. He tired to get up, managed a few hobbled steps of knife-flashing agony, before his ankle gave out, and he landed on his hip so hard he bruised it.

For a long time, all Kunzite could do was stare up at the night sky, refusing the cry, until dawn touched the horizon and spread out, like a poison. Then he got on his knees, and started crawling.

*

“Excuse me,” a wry voice said, quiet and curious. “Are you all right?”

Kunzite, having stilled at the voice, slowly rose to his knees. He was very careful not to put weight onto his swollen ankle. It was nasty looking, and he’d had to toss away his boot several days before; the laces couldn’t tie over the awkward angle of the bone.

The sun was high overhead, and it was hot. Kunzite had been trying to find water for two days but hadn’t managed. At noon, he had curled over with his head on his arms; no doubt he looked pathetic, and fury rolled through him, followed by black despair that left him empty and washed out.

Nobody had come back to look for him. He’d known it: no one cared.

It took him two tries to be able to make more than a croaking noise. “Just. Fine.”

The newcomer snorted, and Kunzite felt the shadow of a horse, the heavy hoof beats reverberating through the ground. “You have a very interesting take on what constitutes ‘fine,’ friend. Would you like a drink of water?” The horse stopped several paces away, and then Kunzite heard the swish and creak as the rider dismounted. Kunzite did not look at him; just looked straight and empty at the horizon, toward his people, his home.

“Go away,” he said, voice a bare whisper.

The stranger said, “Not a chance,” and then knelt beside Kunzite. Kunzite saw a brief impression of shining armor and black set against warmly bronzed skin and eyes like the night sky just before the sun crept over the world. Then Kunzite closed his eyes against it, ignoring him.

It was harder to ignore the canteen mouth pressing against his, though, or the wet rush that shocked his lips open on a needy gasp. It was humiliating, but Kunzite was gulping the water, lapping at it before he could stop himself. And then when he could he tore away with a snarl, and finally, finally turned to glare at his rescuer.

It was just a boy, younger than Kunzite by several years. He had a quiet, intense, curious face, and a wide mouth that gave a wry half-smile that crinkled the corner of one startlingly blue eye, but not both.

“What happened?” the blue eyed stranger asked.

How to answer that? Several ways, and Kunzite’s mouth twisted down bitterly at the ends, and he glared quietly, and said, “I wasn’t fast enough.”

“Ah.” The boy blinked, and raised his eyebrows in incomprehension. “I see.” Kunzite snorted, and looked away from him, closing his eyes against the bright sun to savor the lingering cool of all that water. He’d probably get sick from drinking so much when he was dehydrated. Cramps were welcome, though, in comparison to how dried out he’d felt, almost ready to catch fire, it seemed.

“Look,” the boy said, sounding decisive and sure of himself, as though he was unused to people denying him. “You’re hurt, and I have a camp just a little ways from here. My father is there, and he’ll know how to fix you. Let me help you up on my horse, and we can probably make it there by nightfall. Come on, up.”

The boy shifted, gripped Kunzite’s elbows. Kunzite let him drag him to his feet, with slit eyes and a blank expression.

“Who are you?”

Frowning in concentration, the boy looked up at Kunzite briefly, before looking back down at Kunzite’s broken ankle. He didn’t wince, but he did look concerned. “Nasty, that,” he murmured, and started to help Kunzite hobble to his horse, a pretty bay mare. Luckily, not too tall.

“Who are you?” Kunzite asked again, voice more growl than polite inquiry. A prickling of irritation burred its way through the numbness that had been his most constant companion since he’d realized he’d been left behind.

“Oh, me?” The boy laughed sheepishly, spreading his legs and locking them so that he could brace himself easier. “I’m Endymion. Who are you?”

“…Kunzite.” Endymion’s shoulder wasn’t very broad, but it was strong enough to support Kunzite’s weight; with reluctant grace, Kunzite murmured, “Thank you for help.”

Endymion grinned up at him, crooked and amused. The sunlight brought out blue tints in his hair. “Any time.”

*

Quite possibly Kunzite should have realized it from the elaborate, decorated armor, or the beauty and nobility in his face. Should have recognized that arrogant, confident manner for what it was; after all, wasn’t Kunzite a prince as well, though a lesser one, and unwanted by his own people?

Still, it had been a shock to realize who Endymion was, exactly: the son of the Great King.

The greatest shock, though, was when Endymion asked him if he had anywhere to go to. “No,” Kunzite said, stoic and unflinching though his heart churned and broke and rebroke at that truth. “No, I have no where.”

“Well then,” Endymion said, smiling that crooked, amused smile of his, “you can come home with me. You’re welcome there.”

The Great King had no objections, and Kunzite had nowhere to go, really; he could go back to his people, if he wanted. The King’s healer had magicked him better nearly instantaneously, though the pain of resetting the bone first had been enough to make him go clammy with cold and sweat. But they were the people who had left him behind without looking back; Kunzite could picture the disappointed expression on his mother’s face if he swung himself up into their caravan.

“Oh,” she might say, “it’s you.”

Kunzite didn’t know what he would do if that happened, but the black rage boiling at strange and sudden intervals beneath his skin told him it would be bad.

He said: “All right. I’ll follow you, if you’ll have me, Prince.”

Prince Endymion clapped his shoulder, pleased. “You’re mine, then, now.” Kunzite arched a brow, but bent into a bow. He couldn’t protest Endymion’s claim, because the thought of finally _belonging_ caused Kunzite to feel like he’d swallowed a hummingbird, and it’d lodged itself into the place where his broken heart was supposed to go, shoving aside, at least for the moment, the black despair.

When they left and rode off, into a great golden gate that fell into an equally golden light, Kunzite followed his prince, and didn’t look back.

*

Kunzite could have become several thousand different things, and most probably done them all very well. What he did, instead, was enlist in the army. It was tradition that those of the royal family enlist, and when Endymion walked down to the station to sign up, Kunzite matched him step for step, and signed right below him.

Endymion gave him a wry smile, and self-mocking eyes. “You’ll pick up the pieces when Sergeant Obsidian is done with them, right?”

Kunzite gave a soundless snort, and looked at his prince sideways.

“Of course,” Endymion sighed, despairing. “You’re more like to chew them and spit them out and then try to make a sword out of them, aren’t you?”

Smiling faintly, Kunzite said, “You’ll be fine,” and Endymion made a tragic sound when he realized that Kunzite hadn’t denied it.

Kunzite could have been any one of several thousand different things, but what he wound up being was a soldier, a trained protector and killer, because it was fate.

Endymion was both the destiny he had chosen and the destiny that had chosen him.

*

It was supposed to be Jadeite’s watch, but Kunzite had stalked down the hall and pinned him with a silver glare. “If you want to live to see the morning, get out of my spot,” he said, cool and deadly, and Jadeite raised his blonde eyebrows, looked left, looked right, and said, “Sir, yes, sir!” with a cocky grin.

He’d danced away from his station at the door, and Kunzite had settled there like a grumpy cat, his sword shining. Kunzite proceeded to ignore him for the rest of the night, until the blonde laughed, and swaggered down the hall singing off tune. When he turned the corner, Kunzite rolled his eyes.

He shouldn’t have been out there. It was Jadeite’s turn for a reason. Kunzite had a test himself the next morning with Mistress Opal in the training yards, but this was Endymion’s worst field, and the test he’d been biting his nails over for months. Kunzite would be damned if he wasn’t there to help his prince stagger dazedly back to his rooms.

When the door opened to reveal a slightly green, too calm Endymion, Kunzite raised an eyebrow, shifting to attention. He looked hollowed out, or in shock, actually. All he said, in a quietly wretched voice, was, “Kill me.”

Kunzite snorted, softly, and then placed his hand at the small of his prince’s back, and gently guided him back to his rooms.

*

He could have had any manner of women. They practically threw themselves at him, and when they thought he was just outside – or perhaps in? – of earshot, they sighed flowery things about the lunar whiteness of his hair and the steady gray of his eyes, and the strength of his muscles. Kunzite noticed that they talked especially about the strength of his muscles.

Endymion laughed at him when he complained about it, so he learned to set his jaw and ignore it; ignore, too, the besotted way Zoisite sometimes watched him. That, at least, Kunzite didn’t have to worry about: Zoisite was a soldier, first and foremost. He wouldn’t make anything out of it.

And then came the time when the queen of the moon sent a delegation to earth, and Kunzite met the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. And denied her.

Venus stared at him with hard amber eyes from across the training ground. Her hair was sweaty and plastered to her face and neck, and her pale skin glistened with exertion. She glowed, a powerful, glorious warrior, her chain sparking and dangerous and hot in her capable hands.

She smiled, “General.”

“Senshi Venus,” he returned.

That was their first meeting, and then several others followed, if merely because they were the leaders of their individual guards, and had a duty to entertain each other and take the other’s measure. Endymion raised his eyebrows at him often enough, curious and suggestive, because, as he said, “Since when did the stoic General Kunzite spend an entire dinner making conversation with a pretty girl?”

“Since that pretty girl could match him tactic for tactic,” Kunzite returned dryly.

He could have loved her. Kunzite was nearly certain of that; he could have loved her, and could have loved her well. But he didn’t let himself. He had no room for it, because - _You’re mine, then, now_ – Endymion was there. Maybe unintentionally, maybe not quite in the same way. But Endymion was there, Endymion was his life and his future and all he wanted to remember of his past, and there would never be any room for someone else’s love, even for the love of a woman who could clash blades with him with a smile, and laugh and sing poetry through the gardens.

“I’m sorry,” Kunzite told her, and saw her sad eyes, and hated himself for it.

“So am I,” she said, too strong to let him see anything else. She folded herself in, packed herself away, where he couldn’t get, and that was that. That was the end. She went back to the moon, on good terms with them all – good terms, nothing else.

And Kunzite stayed at Endymion’s side, and did not regret.

*

It didn’t take long for the war to start. Rebel forces, and the moon oppressive in the night sky, for all its small size in the great scheme of things. The Generals and the Prince were sent out at the head of their forces, their lessons being brought out in life or death situations that burned away innocence in the smell of magic and demons and death.

It was hard on them all, and Kunzite took all the broken bits of himself and the wounds and nightmares and stuffed it deep inside so that he could be a strong, steady rock for his prince and for his fellow generals. Nephrite, perhaps, noticed the fatigue that traced its way around his eyes the most, but Nephrite just shrugged, and let him do what he thought was best.

It was going fine, until Kunzite almost lost Endymion.

It was a close thing, a moment of frozen terror in which Kunzite didn’t think, just screamed at Endymion to duck so that he could deflect the axe with a desperate sword. Endymion had still nearly lost his arm, and Kunzite had a gash down his back that would leave a very nasty scar, but they were alive, and Kunzite had been a tight-lipped, pale-faced terror for the rest of the battle, never far from his liege, and the bane of all who opposed him.

He nearly killed the medic when she tried to separate the two of them.

At night, alone in a makeshift tent, with a medic and a guard outside the entrance to give them privacy, Kunzite counted his prince’s breathes, and could not sleep, just stared wide eyed up, replaying what could have been, and what was in his mind over, and over.

In the quiet, Endymion said, “Kunzite. I…thank you. Thank you, my friend.”

Kunzite let out a slow, shuddering breath. “Don’t,” he growled, “do that again. Or _I’ll_ behead you instead.”

With a wry chuckle, Kunzite heard Endymion shift out of his shoddy cot, and shuffle over. Kunzite didn’t move, though he glared at his Prince’s blue gaze. He wasn’t that bad off, and Kunzite refused to be called a mother hen by telling him to go to bed.

For a long time, Endymion just watched him, lying there, no doubt pale and pathetic, too large for his bed and too tired to be doing this, desperately thankful that his life was still there, standing next to him, in one piece. Finally, Endymion gave a harsh sigh, and ran his hand through his hair roughly.

“I can’t believe you,” he said. “I. Great Terra, you’re really ridiculous, you know that? Do you really think I haven’t noticed how you haven’t been sleeping? Or taking care of yourself? You. I just. I don’t know what to do with you.”

“Hm,” Kunzite hummed, his eyes narrow. “You’ll do nothing with me,” he said, “save be happy that I’m there by your side to save your ass.”

“Heh, yeah. Yeah, I suppose.” Endymion shifted closer, onto the cot, careful of Kunzite’s injuries. Then, slow and timid and uncertain, expressions and thoughts and fears flitting through his eyes and across his face in the shadows too fast for Kunzite to catch, he leaned down. Kunzite held his breath, and waited.

“What?”

“You.” He was close now, Endymion’s eyes too bright in the gloom, his hair falling in silken dark waves over his broad forehead. Callused fingers pressed lightly against Kunzite’s cheek, and he almost jumped. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Endymion finally sighed, and said, “I’m sorry. I hope…you’ll excuse one more selfishness, dear General.”

And then he kissed him, and Kunzite was helpless to do anything save accept what his prince gave him, grateful beyond words.

*

That set a precursor for the following months of war. Kunzite was rarely away from Endymion’s side, no matter how bad the mud, or how deep the river of blood flowed, or how high tension got. They watched each other’s backs, and they kept each other on the battlefield, and they kept each other sane at night, in their tent, after they put away their maps – _if_ they put away their maps and strategies – with soft desperate touches and greedy mouths and grasping fingers.

It was good, for all that their world was falling apart around them. Kunzite came to hate a lot of things, like monsters, and planets that wouldn’t come to their aid, and the moon, which gave ultimatums that they refused to surrender to.

But through it all there was one shining, golden light that Kunzite set his life by, that Kunzite knew he could follow fearlessly into tomorrow, could trust his heart and body and soul to.

It didn’t last.

*

“How?” Kunzite stared in disbelief. They were home, briefly, back from constant battles and fear and relief taken in secret behind canvas tents and in the dark of night, with Kunzite on his knees, or Endymion’s fingers pulling panting, muffled sounds from him. They were in the garden right then, because Kunzite had lost Endymion somewhere after dinner, and it was like the loss of most of his body, actually, not just a limb. Not having Endymion there was like being naked and alone and bereft of a purpose for life, and Kunzite hated feeling like that.

He found Endymion hours later, in the rose gardens, with a girl in his arms. A girl with golden hair and eyes of pale, silvery blue, and a crescent moon marring her forehead.

Kunzite’s voice was raw. “ _How?_ ” he rasped. “How could you do this to your people? How could you-?” He cut himself off, but inside his mind, he screamed, _How could you do this to me?_

He would not let the enemy see his pain, though. He swallowed, straightened. His sword came ringing out his scabbard and the little moon princess jumped like a frightened rabbit, eyes wide and confused. “I- I’m sorry,” she said in a poor Terran accent. “I. Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make things worse. I just. I love him and I-”

“Kunzite,” Endymion tried, but then stopped. Kunzite met his eyes, and growled, “You have nothing to say to me. _Nothing_ you can say.”

“Please,” the girl tried again, beseeching, her eyes confused but sad, like she could tell something beautiful had just been broken, irreparably.

“No,” Kunzite said, implacable. “Leave. Go home. Or I will kill you.”

Then Kunzite turned, and stalked through the gardens, and when he’d lost himself in three turns, he took his sword, and spun it in such a vicious arc that it sliced straight through an old elm tree. Behind him, there was a wry chuckle, like golden showers and light.

Kunzite didn’t want to turn, didn’t want to see her. “Take your princess and leave here,” he told her, the golden senshi he almost let himself love. “I won’t kill you. This time.”

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” was all she said, and when Kunzite whirled around, furious and hurt and angry, she was gone, just a swing of golden hair and a rustle of skirt and ribbon as she turned the corner back to her liege.

*

That was the beginning.

*

“I won’t leave her,” Endymion said, voice tired, face hidden by his hands. “I love her, Kunzite. I’m sorry, but I love her.”

“How?” Kunzite forced himself to grit out. They were in Endymion’s rooms, and Kunzite was trying to figure out how this had happened.

“It. Before we went to war,” Endymion tried to explain, shoulders hunching in on themselves, as if the force of Kunzite’s disapproving stare was too much. “Venus must have told her about us. And. Serenity was curious. She snuck here, and we met, accidentally. And then it…it just happened.”

Kunzite had to take a moment, before he was sure his voice would come out more or less evenly. “Before the war?”

“Yes.”

“Before-”

“Yes,” Endymion said, miserably. “I’m sorry, Kunzite. I didn’t think…I thought. I’m sorry Kunzite. But. I can’t give you more than what I have. Serenity has the rest.”

“But _I gave you everything_ ,” Kunzite ground out, making himself say it, hating it. “ _Everything_ of me, Endymion. I gave you everything and you took it and I _thought_ you were giving it back, but then I find out that this- this-”

“This what?” Endymion asked dangerously, through his hands.

Kunzite took a deep breath, and said, “I see.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

*

“I understand you,” she said quietly, and Kunzite looked up from where he was slumped in a little used part of the garden. “I know what you’re feeling.” It was a woman, a serving girl. Kunzite frowned.

“I know you,” he said. She had hair like flames and eyes dark and strange, too intense, too lucid to be real and sane.

“Yes,” she cooed, coming to sit by him, too close. Kunzite recoiled automatically, and yet…

“You smell like darkness,” he said, dangerously; ready to kill her in a moment, lest she threaten- Kunzite deflated in a moment, bitter and hurt and broken and _what was left for him_? nothing, now that he’d given away everything on a man who’d let him down.

“I would,” she agreed, smiling sharp and vicious and sweetly commiserating. “I sold my soul to it when I saw them together.” She leaned close, and breathed into his ear, her hand on his bicep. Her fingers curled, and nails like talons pressed hard into his skin, through his jacket. “The prince, and that moon brat.”

Kunzite went very, very still.

“Yes,” she giggled, curving into him, her body strangely deceptive, her voice oddly commanding, her eyes abnormally strong. The maid outfit she wore didn’t suit, and darkness flickered about her. “I know about them. I loved him once, and then he betrayed all I believed in with _her_ ,” she spat, “the _enemy_. He has been tainted, ruined, turned from his path. It must be fixed. We must fix it, or else we are doomed.”

She sighed, sweetly, and said, “I can taste it, your despair. Broken loyalty, it is…entrancing. Betrayed or betrayer, which are you? Or are you both?” her eyes were mad-bright in her elfin face, surrounded by her wild fall of red, red hair. “Will you come with me? Will you help us? Help our people? Will you take your revenge on the moon and all those who scoff and hate and would see us crawl?”

Very slowly, Kunzite looked at her, and asked, “Who are you?”

She smiled, vicious and bright and full of terrible possibility; the darkness refracted in her eyes echoed in his soul, and he found himself listening, receptive to her despite himself.

“Me?” she asked, coy and dangerous and in control. “I,” she said, “am Queen Beryl, ruler of the rebel forces.”

And Kunzite sat there for a long moment, and stared at her while darkness caught inside him like a disease, and grew, and thought, and, finally, said, “The enemy of mine enemy is my friend."

*

And that? Well, that was the end of it.


End file.
